The public beurocracy that I am most familiar with is that in the UK. Here, the government’s approach to risk, including Catastrophic risk, takes place within the Cabinet Office, and in particular their civil contingency secretariat. From what little I know of the US beurocracy I think it is the same in that risk management is the responsibility, at least in part, of the white house.
Risks fall under the authority of different government departments as you put it, in two different ways. Firstly, for the purpose of the Annual National Risk Assessment departments are assigned ‘ownership’ of risks for which they are percieved to have particular expertise. They are then tasked with producing a ‘reasonable worst case scenario’ for these risks, setting out different aspects of the potential impact. In the most recent assessment they were also asked to consider possible impacts beyond this reasonable worst case and that we might see as catestrophic.
The second way in which departments are tasked with responding to risks is that each department is asked to consider what effect the reasonable worst case scenario of each risk might have on them, and to consider ways of mitigating this risk. Contrary to the suggestion here however, this ownership is not 1 to 1 between departments and risks, but rather all departments are asked to submit plans in how to respond to all risks unless they can show that 1 - the impact on them will be minimal or 2 - if things are so bad that the impact on them would be significant then things have already become so bad that this is unlikely to be a significant priority. Obviously some departments wwill have a lot more to do to respond to some risks than others, but in-fact each department plans for the entire breadty of risks that fall into the national risk assessment.
I think that this process is preferable to having a seperate department for catestrophic risks in several respects. Firstly, the central executive department is best placed to coordinate activity acrosss other departments, which I think is something we would all agree is important. As other commentators have suggested, a seperate department might well end up having bugetary and other disputes with existing departments hambering such coordination. Secondly, this arrangement helps to highlight that risk mitigation should be right at the heart of government, and is part of its central executive function. Contrast this for instance with Climate change, which is part of its own department in many countries, but is consiquently a long way from most executive thinking—although there may be other reaosns for this of course.
There are some downsidew with this set up of course. irst amongst these is probably that it places catestrophic risks as just one amongst the entire selection of risks faced by a country, and to the extent that these risks are global may give them less rather than more priority in central government thinking. If catestrophic risk was primarilly under the foreighnn office / state department it is possible that global risks might get more priority, although it is also possible that exactly the same problem would reemerge. Another problem is that, even with the introduction of some consideration of scenarios that are beyond the ‘reasonable worst case’ it does seem like departments prefer to limit their considerations to what is reasonably likely, rather than what is potentially most catestrophic, because it is easier to base such scenarios on scientific evidence and the make good contingency plans for them. A final issue is that The cabinet office seems to classify its information by default, wheras it would probably be better from a scientific and campaigning perspective if assessments about catestrophic risks and how we are mitigating them where freely available.
Perhaps all of these problems together might imply that it would be net positive if, within the existing risk assessment frameworks, there was a specific office for assessing potentially catestrophic risks that could provide additional input alongside that from individual departments, do so more openley and potentially be situated between the Cabinet and Foreign Offices (Whitehouse and State Department). However, given the benefits of the existing system I do not see much likelyhood that an entire government department for existential and catestrophic risk would be a net improvement over the existing model, at least in the UK, even if such a thing were politically feasible.
This comment was informed by some recent meetings with civil servants, obviously it is possible that it reflects some of their biases in favour of the existing system which, due to its nature, is hard to evaluate from an external perspective.
The public beurocracy that I am most familiar with is that in the UK. Here, the government’s approach to risk, including Catastrophic risk, takes place within the Cabinet Office, and in particular their civil contingency secretariat. From what little I know of the US beurocracy I think it is the same in that risk management is the responsibility, at least in part, of the white house.
Risks fall under the authority of different government departments as you put it, in two different ways. Firstly, for the purpose of the Annual National Risk Assessment departments are assigned ‘ownership’ of risks for which they are percieved to have particular expertise. They are then tasked with producing a ‘reasonable worst case scenario’ for these risks, setting out different aspects of the potential impact. In the most recent assessment they were also asked to consider possible impacts beyond this reasonable worst case and that we might see as catestrophic.
These impacts are then collated and evaluated by the cabinet office for the purose of producing the National Risk Assessment, which is classified, and the National Risk Register, which is available here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-risk-register-of-civil-emergencies-2017-edition.
The second way in which departments are tasked with responding to risks is that each department is asked to consider what effect the reasonable worst case scenario of each risk might have on them, and to consider ways of mitigating this risk. Contrary to the suggestion here however, this ownership is not 1 to 1 between departments and risks, but rather all departments are asked to submit plans in how to respond to all risks unless they can show that 1 - the impact on them will be minimal or 2 - if things are so bad that the impact on them would be significant then things have already become so bad that this is unlikely to be a significant priority. Obviously some departments wwill have a lot more to do to respond to some risks than others, but in-fact each department plans for the entire breadty of risks that fall into the national risk assessment.
I think that this process is preferable to having a seperate department for catestrophic risks in several respects. Firstly, the central executive department is best placed to coordinate activity acrosss other departments, which I think is something we would all agree is important. As other commentators have suggested, a seperate department might well end up having bugetary and other disputes with existing departments hambering such coordination. Secondly, this arrangement helps to highlight that risk mitigation should be right at the heart of government, and is part of its central executive function. Contrast this for instance with Climate change, which is part of its own department in many countries, but is consiquently a long way from most executive thinking—although there may be other reaosns for this of course.
There are some downsidew with this set up of course. irst amongst these is probably that it places catestrophic risks as just one amongst the entire selection of risks faced by a country, and to the extent that these risks are global may give them less rather than more priority in central government thinking. If catestrophic risk was primarilly under the foreighnn office / state department it is possible that global risks might get more priority, although it is also possible that exactly the same problem would reemerge. Another problem is that, even with the introduction of some consideration of scenarios that are beyond the ‘reasonable worst case’ it does seem like departments prefer to limit their considerations to what is reasonably likely, rather than what is potentially most catestrophic, because it is easier to base such scenarios on scientific evidence and the make good contingency plans for them. A final issue is that The cabinet office seems to classify its information by default, wheras it would probably be better from a scientific and campaigning perspective if assessments about catestrophic risks and how we are mitigating them where freely available.
Perhaps all of these problems together might imply that it would be net positive if, within the existing risk assessment frameworks, there was a specific office for assessing potentially catestrophic risks that could provide additional input alongside that from individual departments, do so more openley and potentially be situated between the Cabinet and Foreign Offices (Whitehouse and State Department). However, given the benefits of the existing system I do not see much likelyhood that an entire government department for existential and catestrophic risk would be a net improvement over the existing model, at least in the UK, even if such a thing were politically feasible.
This comment was informed by some recent meetings with civil servants, obviously it is possible that it reflects some of their biases in favour of the existing system which, due to its nature, is hard to evaluate from an external perspective.
This was very informative. Thank you for taking the time to share it.